Weeknotes 26-44: sickie and silent hill
Bruhhhhhhhhhhhh I was sick this entire week so I did very very little. Monday I took off from work which I really needed after the wedding, but the rest of it was mostly Suffering and staying home every day. I haven’t had a week where I worked from home every day in over a year easily!!! I hate it!
I thought I was feeling better on Wednesday so I went to see The Omen in theaters with Brina, fun movie! And then I also thought I was feeling better Thursday so I went to the pinball tournament, which most people dressed up in costume for. Sadly I was not better after either of those, just the temporary improvement which then gets worse because I don’t have the ability to cough up all the gunk in me. I skipped the two Halloween parties I was invited to because I was feeling pretty awful Friday and Saturday, but I did go to Michelle’s birthday dim sum and party after, since I got to be home and in bed by 10 since it started early.
Since I was sick this week was mostly one of Media Consumption, I finished reading Stop! Hibari-kun volume 2 which was cute and fun (and has aged wildly lmao) and read all of Safer Places by Kit Anderson which was really nice, really interesting reading a collection of comics that are seemingly unrelated from each other, but many of them have throughlines or references to each other. Really nice!!!! Also read more Abigail, which I’m enjoying. Definitely big YA vibes but I don’t mind that after reading a few books that are more Literature. A pretty fun breezy read that I assume I’ll finish within a week or two and then it’ll be time for Calcvol5!!!!!
I finally got around to finishing Silent Hill 3 in time for our work game club discussion about it. Really incredible game, though not without some frustrations! Completely unmatched visual aesthetic and auditory experience, easily one of the best looking PS2 games I’ve played, and one of the best looking games I’ve played in general. The lighting, texture work, and models all look fantastic and the sound design is unbeatable. I keep thinking about this specific area, the 3rd floor employee wing of the nightmare hospital, where the soundtrack is just this deep sub-bass wobbling sound, incredibly effective.
I kept thinking about how SH3 felt like the inverse of SH2 in a lot of ways. SH2 is all about James’ internality and the town becomes a reflection of his inner demons, where SH3 feels more like the world is a reflection of what is thrust upon her and what she’s forced to deal with. Almost every character you meet in SH2 are your equals in a way, they all have something they’re struggling with and their town reflects that, but for Heather almost every person she meets is trying to use her or manipulate her in some way. The ending especially, so incredibly visceral the way she’s being used. The level design feels more claustrophobic than SH2, there’s no “open” areas until halfway through the game, and even then you’re barely actually walking around it, instead being funneled back into tight hallways. When you’re in the hospital, reading the notes left by Stanley Coleman, it feels even more like you’re always being followed or watched by a menacing presence.
I played on easy action/easy puzzle which I kinda regret, I found it often a bit too easy, like I never died from combat and barely needed to use my healing items or ammo since monsters were few and far between and pretty easy to kill. Maybe I’ll play it again sometime!! And if I play on normal puzzle then the puzzles will be different so I won’t even have the solutions memorized which is nice.
Monsters? They looked like monsters to you?
Things I’ve been into this week!!!
- two incredible zara larsson remixes